"A composer
of enchanting music, one of New York’s most individual voices of the present
generation." "A seminal figure... one of the leading postminimal
composers."
THE VILLAGE VOICE
"Elodie
Lauten’s music extract order from chaos."
"Elegiac melodies...pungent and intriguing."
"... a fixture of the New York scene."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"One of America’s premiere post-minimalist composers." DOWNTOWN EXPRESS
"A force on the new music scene." FANFARE
"A musical magus in the Renaissance tradition." THE CHICAGO READER
Lauten's Variations on the Orange Cycle for solo piano was included in Chamber Music America's list of best works of the 20th century.
Lauten's opera Waking in New York, portrait of Allen Ginsberg was listed among Sequenza21's list of the most influential works of the last three decades.
About
S.O.S.W.T.C.
One of the most powerful works to bloom out of the ashes of the World
Trade Center attacks was Elodie Lauten's S.O.S.W.T.C. Using synthesized
ambient sounds of New York and jarring electronic sounds that fold upon
themselves with the grit of collapsing steel, Lauten's meditation diverged
from both the sentimental tributes and the haphazard patriotic arrangements
that followed the attacks. She opted to express the horror of those morning
hours, a feeling that she as a longtime New Yorker has a particular claim
on, rather than the sadness of the aftermath. Released only a few months
after Sept. 11, S.O.S.W.T.C. possesses a rawness that few other composers
have been able to capture.
Amanda MacBlane, NEW YORK PRESS
About
Waking in New York:
"The poetry of Allen Ginsberg has inspired a wide range of
composers from Lee Hyla (whose Howl pits the Kronos Quartet against
a recording of Ginsberg reading his celebrated poem) to Philip Glass (whose
Ginsberg settings include the eclectic Hydrogen Jukebox and Symphony
#6 which is a Mahlerian adaptation of Ginsberg's "Plutonian Ode").
In terms of authenticity, however, all are trumped by Elodie Lauten, who
actually was Ginsberg's roommate during the 1970s. Lauten's Waking
in New York, a poly-stylistic musical melange residing somewhere between
musical theatre and a requiem, is Lauten's moving memorial to her creative
mentor who encouraged her to pursue a career as a composer."
Frank J. Oteri, NEW MUSIC BOX
Lauten reveals greater artistry the further you look beneath the surface, successfully marking the leaps in Ginsberg's own impressionistic narrative with appropriate changes in metre and key. Ken Smith, GRAMOPHONE U.K.
Strange but oddly compelling work...often wild and marvelously demented chord changes... this is a music of Gotham updated to our times, immortalized by one of its best poetic voices, and put in motion by a composer in tune with the pulse of her city." Gimbel, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
A Libretto
via Ginsberg captures a City's Spirit
"Blues melodies, gospel and pop as a song cycle. (...) Waking
in New York is actually a lovely, effective and affecting song cycle
for vocal ensemble and orchestra. Ms. Lauten has treated Ginsberg's poetry
and its underlying spirit carefully, even reverently. She tucked its personal
and sometimes diarylike texts into her own agreeably melodic and eclectic
style, but she also appears to have listened carefully for traces of the
music that animated Ginsberg's soul. When
she found them, both in direct references and by implication, she incorporated
them into her setting in the form of blues melodies, the soulful wail
of the gospel singer, hints of jazz and the insistent rhythms and bright
melodies of pop music. Perhaps most crucially, she presented Ginsberg's
texts with clarity and directness, never obscuring his ideas or pacing
for the sake of a purely musical effect.
Allan Kozinn, THE NEW YORK TIMES
About
The Deus Ex Machina Cycle:
"A grand work that we are likely to return to again and again…
timelessly beautiful… Unquestionably Lauten’s own is this fascinating
combination of baroque and earlier musics with contemporary concerns."
21ST CENTURY MUSIC
"A marvelous
piece of music… performed on this CD with admirable exactitude and with
the immediacy of a live recording….Although startlingly new at times I
very soon recognized the rightness, the fitness of The Deus Ex Machina
Cycle. I doubt that I will be alone in this recognition.…Elodie Lauten
is set to become a fixture of future musical lexicons."
NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL (England)
"A spiritual complexity that is no stranger to the best works of the classical chamber music tradition." CHAMBER MUSIC AMERICA
"Wonderfully exciting music." OPZIJ (Netherlands)
"This work merits a major recording as soon as possible." THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
About Tronik Involutions:
"Mesmerizing keyboard work. The music on this CD is quite extraordinary." OPTION MAGAZINE
"Powerful, spontaneous and enlightening." THE SANTA FE SUN
"Unforgettable. Sounds like food for the soul." NOW MAGAZINE (Canada)
"An extraordinary revelation." NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL (England)
VILLAGE VOICE REVIEWS BY KYLE GANN
Inscapes from Exile - Consumer Guide
Note: Kyle Gann wrote over 20 pieces about Elodie Lauten's music for the Village Voice since 1987; only some of them were included in Downtown, his published compilation of articles.